


The End will Never Come, We are the Chosen Ones

by chaWOOPa



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Battle of Hogwarts, Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Child Soldiers, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Refrenced Violence, Temporary Character Death, can be read romantic or not, implied harry/neville, mostly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:41:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25594480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaWOOPa/pseuds/chaWOOPa
Summary: Hermione isn’t sure she can call it a castle anymore, to be honest. She looks around her and she cannot see the corridors she ran down with her friends their first few years. She does not hear the echo of golden times and sunshine.Hermione looks around herself and all she sees is a war-torn ruin and the fresh ghosts that haunt it.~~~Ron finds another body and his chest pulses with hurt again. He doesn't recognize the student but they wear a black and yellow tie so he knows they were fighting for Hogwarts. They are so small in death.Ron takes a deep breath and wonders how much more of this he can take.
Relationships: Hermione Granger & Harry Potter & Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger/Harry Potter/Ron Weasley
Comments: 2
Kudos: 83





	The End will Never Come, We are the Chosen Ones

The castle is quiet. 

This is, perhaps, the most jarring part of the ceasefire. The death eaters withdrew and the survivors left took a deep breath. In the moment of the inhale, the silence became sacred. 

People weep in the great hall, of course, people gasp in pain and people breathe their last and people mourn family and friends, but there is a bubble of silence around the rest of the castle. 

Hermione isn’t sure she can call it a castle anymore, to be honest. She looks around her and she cannot see the corridors she ran down with her friends their first few years. She does not hear the echo of golden times and sunshine. She knows the classrooms she passes, of course. She knows which ones she attended class in, which ones she hid in when she was upset, which ones she snuck into to play truth or dare around a bottle of smuggled firewhisky with the other girls in the dorms once they were old enough.

She cannot see those nights now. Hermione looks around herself and all she sees is a war-torn ruin and the fresh ghosts that haunt it. 

In the silence of the cease fire she drifts down the once hallowed halls of her school and she wonders how anyone will survive this.

#

Ron knows he should be with his family. 

He knows that in the great hall where the dead and dying lie there is also the living and the injured. He knows that one of his brothers is on the ground among the rows of the dead while the rest of the family stands and clutches at each other. Ron knows he should be in there with them, but Hermione is walking the halls trying to find anyone still alive. Ginny is on the castle grounds coping in the only way any of them know how to anymore. Harry is, well, Harry is missing, and Ron has the sinking feeling that he knows where Harry is.

Ron’s chest aches and his hands shake with a mixture of exhaustion, grief, and anger. He doesn’t understand the cease fire. He doesn’t understand the death. He doesn’t understand any of it. Nothing has meaning anymore, it is all just bloodshed and anger and death.

Harry is missing, George is dead, Hermione is holding on by a thread. Ron feels worn out and strung tight at the same time. He feels like a wind up toy at the end of its life, he is still moving but the momentum is almost gone. He is still wound up, but only barely, and any moment now could be the one that he stops. 

Ron finds another body and his chest pulses with hurt again. He doesn't recognize the student but they wear a black and yellow tie so he knows they were fighting for Hogwarts. They are so small in death.

Ron kneels down and gently pulls their eyelids closed before sending a message containing the location to Professor Flitwick so he can record the spot in case they don't manage to get them before the death eaters return. 

Ron takes a deep breath and wonders how much more of this he can take.

#

Hermione is just outside the doors to the great hall when she hears it. A great roaring cheer echoes from the grounds and Hermione freezes. 

She knows what that means.

She looks around the entrance hall for her boys instinctively but neither of them are there and her chest constricts. Harry hasn't been seen since the ceasefire was called. Hermione has passed Ron a couple times, but he isn't there  _ now  _ and that is the only thing she can think of as survivors come pouring out of the great hall. She only realizes belatedly that Voldemort has said something. 

Ron catches her hand from somewhere in the crowd and Hermione only jumps a little before he is pulling her along. There is a piercing scream from the front steps and Hermione feels cold down to her bones as her eyes adjust to the dawning light of the sun and she sees Hargid. 

He is weeping. 

He is banged up and bruised.

There are ropes around his middle, his arms, his neck. 

He is carrying a body. 

Hermione's whole world narrows down to the tattered sweater and mud stained jeans that clothe the corpse in Hagrid's arms. Harry's hair is as hopeless in death as it was in life. Hermione has a flash of the yule ball, two weeks after Pavarti and Lavender had taken the two of them under their wings and taught them how to take care of Afro-textured hair. Hermione hadn't been able to keep up with it, but Harry had done his best. 

Harry's arm swings freely as Hagrid stumbles forward and Hermione is clutching Ron's hand so hard it hurts. 

He wasn't supposed to die. 

Harry wasn't supposed to die. 

Harry was supposed to make it through the war, he was going to see the morning dawn when Voldemort wasn't alive and he didn't have to worry about him. He was supposed to go home to Ginny and Neville and Luna, was supposed to get to have a happily ever after. 

Hermione's feet are rooted to the spot as she tries to understand why Harry's body is limp. It feels as though there is a thousand miles between the two of them. 

She can feel the breath still burning in her lungs. 

Harry wasn't supposed to be the one to die.

#

Ron knows loss. He knows it intimately. He knows it because his brother is lying on the floor of the great hall with half a laugh still etched on his face. He knows it because his mentor and the woman who had his child are laying side by side on the same floor his brother rests. He knows it because there is a kid named Colin who was small in life and is even smaller in death halfway to the great hall where he was going to lie next to a girl named Lavender whose face is covered by a red sheet. 

Her blood is still drying in her hair, on her clothes, on the floor of the corridor she was killed in.

Ron knows loss so intimately he didn't think he could be struck low by it anymore. 

He was wrong. 

Ron watches Hagrid lay Harry's body at the foot of the man who has been hunting them for years and he can't stop waiting for him to stand up. Ron can't tear his eyes away from him. 

# 

Neville runs forward and Hermione only blinks. That should be her. That should be Ron. That should be any number of people, but of course it is Neville. Brave, shy Neville; the one built for peaceful times. Neville is just as hardened a warrior as she is. It is- it was only a matter of time before he and Harry finally allowed themselves to fall into each other. Hermione watched the boys dance around each other for years, had many conversations with Ginny about it, and Ron too. They were both so noble, so shy, so scared of what the world might think. 

Harry shouldn't be dead. He can't be. He  _ can't be dead.  _ Hermione feels as though her world is splitting in two. Neville is screaming and the crowd around her is responding but Ron's hand shakes in hers and he is silent as the grave. No, not the grave. Ron is silent as the rattling breath between terrible battles. 

This is a breath. She can feel it trembling in her lungs. She isn't sure anymore when the last time she slept was, when the last time she ate was. She can count the threads falling out of the hole in the arm of Harry's sweater where he used to put his thumb so he could use his hand but keep his palm warm. 

His circulation was terrible, he was always cold. 

Hermione wonders if he is still cold, or if the damage done to him by his relatives is reversed where he ended up. 

Hermione hates herself for wondering. 

#

Ron can feel the frenetic energy of the crowd behind him as they watch Voldemort try to make Neville fall and he wishes he could join in. He wishes he could let that energy touch his own, revitalize him in the same way the battle did, force his jaw open and words out of his mouth. He can hear Ginny screaming curses from behind him and he can hear Minerva abusing the death eaters in a way that he never thought her capable of. He can feel the anger coursing through the people around him and he knows that the battle isn't lost whatever Voldemort may say. They are still alive, and as long as they are alive the battle will never be over. 

But Ron doesn't want to fight anymore. He wants to lay down with his brother, to feel Harry's body curled between his and Hermione's, heart beating strong and steady. He wants to be lulled to sleep by the slow breathing of the two people he loves most in the world. He wants the comfort of Harry's hand in his, of Hermione's arm around his waist, of Fred and George with a hand on either of his shoulders. He wants his family, whole and unbroken. 

There are tears dripping off his face and onto the stone beneath him and he wills Harry to move, to breathe, to sit up, to twitch in any way at all. 

Ron will fight. He will fight until his last breath, he will take as many of those bastards in black who hide their faces from the world with him as he can, and then he will die with one hand in Hermione's own and the other clutching his wand. 

Wherever Harry ended up, wherever he is now, Ron will see him again.

#

Everything moves so fast after Neville kills Voldemort’s snake. Neville severs his last link to a counterfeit version of immortality and it is like the world explodes. One moment she is rushing into the castle for one last attempt at defending the world she desperately wanted to feel like home, and the next she is flinging spells and putting up shields faster than she ever thought possible. One moment she is fighting Bellatrix with Luna and Ginny, the silence of the castle shattered with screaming and curses and explosions, the next the smoke is clearing and the room is silent once more save for the heavy breathing of the pair circling each other in the middle of the room. 

Harry is there, alive, breathing and fighting and  _ talking _ . Harry- _ her Harry _ -her brother, is  _ alive _ . 

Hermione isn't sure what happened but she knows that if harry dies here, now, Voldemort won't have time to celebrate before he is nothing more than ash. 

Hermione is exhausted, her magic dangerously low, but she has enough raw emotion to power a firestorm.

#

The room is silent as Harry taunts Tom Riddle. The two circle each other in the center of the room and Ron itches to run forward and prove to himself that Harry is here, alive, physically present in a way that means he is going to stay. 

There is a bubble that he dares not break, though. A heavy silence that weighs everyone down, stops the fighting and allows Harry to focus. 

Ron is a tactician. He always has been, from chess games with Percy and Bill when he was little to the months on the road, it is what he is good at. He can look at a situation and see all the ways it can go and how to manipulate the situation so it ends well. Ron’s knuckles go white around his wand and he can feel his fingernails digging into his palms. 

If Harry is going to win, and Harry  _ will  _ win, then he needs to focus. 

Ron holds his breath as he watches Harry and Voldemort circle each other. He cannot hear what they are saying through the blood rushing in his ears, but he doesn't have to. 

He doesn't want to. 

#

Voldemort's body hits the floor with a final thump that echoes off the ruins of the great hall. The world is silent for a moment longer as everyone in the room waits for someone else to move, for someone to declare the war over, or else for Voldemort to sit back up. 

After a long moment, there is a whoosh of air as Harry breathes out in relief, and just like that the spell keeping the room silent is broken. Cheers erupt from around the room and adults and teenagers alike rush to the side of the boy who ended it. Ron and Hermione are half a room away from him, white knuckled grips on their wands not relaxing for a second as they stare at the body on the floor. 

It takes a precious moment for them to realize what this means, and then the mob of people around Harry is their next target. 

Someone reaches out to grab Ron's arm but he wrenches away with a growl and leaps towards his Harry. 

Hermione is halfway to Harry in the blink of an eye, feet pounding on the cracked tiles of the hall. Someone pulls a smaller girl out of her way and she brandishes her wand as a warning. She is something feral and scared and angry, a wild animal trying to get back to its family. She is tired. She is furious. She is wounded. She is mourning.

Hermione is scared. Her hands shake as she shoves her way into the outside of the fray around Harry and she can feel Ron doing the same on the other side of the hall.

Ron dropped his wand after the first person fell away from the crowd upon seeing him. He will do anything to get to Harry. He knows this down to the marrow of his bones. He will hurt anyone if he has to, so he drops his wand. The bruises and scrapes that hands and nails leave are nothing compared to what his emotions might throw out of his wand right now. While he has no qualms about it in the moment, if he hurts someone now he will be wracked with guilt later. There is enough pain and death to last a lifetime. Ron refuses to cause more.

Ron grabs the shoulder of the next person and pulls them back, throws them behind him and doesn't wait until they hit the ground to reach for the next. His Harry is  _ alive,  _ he is not going to wait to confirm that. He is not going to wait to embrace him. 

#

The crowd moves as one to make two paths for the feral children fighting their way to the center. All at once, there is not a single body between Harry, Ron, and Hermione. The three freeze for a moment, looking at each other with wide, watering eyes, and then the three are crashing together. 

If their skin tones weren't so different, it would be hard to tell where one person ended and the next began. As it is, they might as well be a single entity, six hands all pale with the force used to hold onto the other two, six legs shaking with the effort of staying upright, three chests heaving for breath from the run to get to each other, six eyes shut tight as they breathe in deep. 

The room goes quiet in waves as the three saviors of the Wizarding world stand in the rubble of their childhood, breathing in each other's presence. There are other children in the room and each of them turn their faces away from the touching reunion. They know what will happen next. They already know what a toll the war has taken on their fellows, they know, too, what must be done next. They know that the war isn't over, that the final battle is not yet won. 

This is a turning point, the symbolic victory of the forces of good, but they have been living and breathing the war for years now, won and lost battles in equal measure. These children are more like soldiers than some of the adults in the room. 

So they turn their faces away, allow the most broken of their number the luxury of a somewhat private reunion and breakdown. 

The adults in the room look on with varying degrees of happiness and victory as their heroes stand tall, victorious in a way they never allowed themselves to hope anyone else could. 

There is a giggle, broken and warped, that echoes from Harry's chest. Childlike in the relief that it conveys, the temporary excitement of the adrenaline draining as the boy realizes that the worst of the fight is over. Another joins in, this one breathy and raw, belonging to Hermione. She clutches her boys harder as Ron joins in as well. There is something feral in the way their giggles echo and then fade slowly as the three take a breath. 

Then the world shakes as a sob escapes Harry's throat. 

He takes a great gasping breath and then he is sobbing fully, clutching at his friends with shaking arms as the three of them sink to their knees, their shaking legs no longer able to support each other. 

There is a ripple of unease across the adults as the children in the room meet eyes with each other, sharing knowing looks and having silent conversations. 

This has been a long time coming, they know. The trio in the center of the room have been at war since they were eleven. The story of Quirrel and the Philosopher's stone, the true story, had made its rounds during that last, desperate year, among the rest of his battles from his years at Hogwarts. 

An eleven year old Ron was willing to give his life to save his friends. An eleven year old Hermione solved a riddle none of the adults in the school could begin to wrap their heads around. An eleven year old Harry walked into flame and death for the chance to save the people he cares about and emerged victorious.

It was a story used to bolster morale, to justify the sacrifices older students made, to give younger students hope that things would end up okay. Harry didn't emerge unscathed, none of the three did, but they emerged victorious, and that was the important part. 

Here, now, Harry and Ron and Hermione have emerged victorious once again. The evil is defeated, for good this time. Voldemort was only human, in the end, and it took a child to prove that. 

The other children in the room watch the adults as the trio fall apart. The golden trio, the heroes, the saviors of the Wizarding world. These are children turned soldier turned figureheads, these are real people, to the other children in the room. These are people they grew up with, people they saw at both their highest and lowest. Half of the kids in the room only stopped having nightmares about Harry’s breakdown over Cedric’s body when the Carrows moved into the castle and gave them something new to be frightened of. 

For the adults in the room, Harry had ceased to be a child October 31st, 1981. It had been nearly 17 years since most of the adults in the room had thought of him as a person, as something other than a hero, a figure, untouchable and immovable. For the first time in years, and really for the first time ever for a majority of them, the adults are seeing the child behind the hero. 

The war is won, or good as. The head has been severed, the rest of the body will follow shortly, though not at all quietly. There is time to breathe, now, time to think, to grieve. There is a hero standing tall, victorious, with a smile on his face and peace in his heart and mind. It is over. Everything is done. Things are fixed. 

Except. 

Except there is no hero standing tall over the corpse of his enemy, there is no good to stand triumphant over the corpse of the monster it has finally defeated. There is blood on Harry’s sweater, there are tears in Harry’s eyes, there is a tremor in his hands that shakes the whole world with it. 

There are bodies piled on the floor around them, friend and foe and family all lying motionless, more human in death than they ever looked in life. There are three children falling apart at the seams on the floor of the ruins of what should have been but never was an actual childhood. They are clutching each other like they can keep each other together through sheer force of will. 

It is terrible and heartbreaking and eye opening and tragic and uncomfortable for everyone watching. 

There are no heroes at the end of the battle of Hogwarts. 

There are no winners in this war, there are only survivors huddled together in the aftermath. 

**Author's Note:**

> I got to thinking about the fact that ron and hermione didn't _know_ that harry was going to come back to life. They didn't know he was alive, they had to have been fucked up about it, right? and anyway this happened. 
> 
> To clarify a couple things, Harry&ron&hermione are in that nebulous version of queerplatonic where they are somewhere between family and something, like, deeper? Like, found family to the extreme. They love each other a lot. they are soulmates. They are not romantic (ron and hermione are romantic but the two arent romantic with harry), though if u want to read it like that that is fine. Personally, and i hinted at this in the fic, but personally I ship harry/ginny/neville/luna as a polycule with varying degrees of romantic and platonic feelings for each other. 
> 
> come yell with me about harry potter in the notes if u want.


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